Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS): the COLA is automatic and it compounds up to a lifetime cap, service credit can be purchased, and MOSERS runs a program it calls “BackDROP”. Vesting takes five years for general state employees.
Provisional. This page is published at medium confidence. The specific points that could not be confirmed are listed under What could not be verified below, and are named rather than smoothed over.
The verdicts
| Is the COLA granted? | Automatic |
|---|---|
| Is the COLA compounded? | Compounded (until lifetime cap) |
| Vesting | 5 years (general state employees) |
| Buy service credit? | Yes |
| DROP? | Yes (called “BackDROP”) |
| State | Missouri |
Those first two rows are separate questions and are routinely confused. Whether you get an increase at all is one thing; whether it compounds is another. A system can grant an increase automatically every year and still compute it against your original benefit forever, which is a materially worse deal than it sounds.
The COLA
“MOSERS provides annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to retired members and their surviving beneficiaries.” For retired general state employees, “COLAs are based on 80% of the percentage increase in the average Consumer Price Index (CPI) from one year to the next.” “A COLA can range from a minimum of 0% to a maximum of 5%.” Pre-8/28/1997 MSEP retirees have a higher floor: “you will get a COLA of at least 4% each year (maximum 5%) until you reach your COLA cap.” They reach the COLA cap when the sum of their COLAs equals 65% of their initial benefit amount. The 2025 COLA was 2.359%; the 2026 COLA is 2.152%.
Buying service credit
MOSERS members can purchase up to 4 years of active-duty military service (not available to MSEP 2011/Judicial Plan 2011 members) and up to 4 years of prior non-federal public employment “at a reduced rate,” once vested and actively employed. Payment is by lump sum, installments (“interest will be added to the cost of purchase”), rollover, or a combination.
Run your own numbers before deciding: some purchases never recover their cost, and the calculator shows which.
Coordinate this with your overall retirement plan
An adviser can help weigh a COLA that may not compound, a service-credit purchase that may never pay for itself, or a DROP election against the rest of your retirement plan, but that does not replace the numbers in your own member statement.
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Vesting
“As a general state employee, once you have worked for 5 years in a MOSERS benefit-eligible position, you are vested.” Vesting means: “You are eligible for a future pension benefit.” MOSERS states that this eligibility continues even if a member leaves state government before reaching their plan’s retirement age. The source page did not break out MSEP/2000/2011/Judicial plan-by-plan distinctions, so this figure is reported for general state employees only.
DROP
MOSERS runs a genuine DROP-class program under its own name: “The "DROP" in BackDROP stands for Deferred Retirement Option Provision. If you are eligible, it is a choice you will make at retirement. With BackDROP, you can get a one-time lump-sum payment in addition to your monthly pension payments from MOSERS.” It comes with a tradeoff: “Choosing BackDROP will, most likely, reduce the amount of your monthly benefit.” It’s restricted to general state employees in MSEP/MSEP 2000 who work at least 2 years beyond normal retirement eligibility; the lump sum equals 90% of what pension payments would have been paid during the BackDROP period.
DROP is rarer than it appears across the systems on this site: most have none.
What could not be verified
REFUND TERMS: this page does not state what happens to your contributions if you take a refund instead of leaving your account with the system: that comparison was not independently researched for this system this session, and is left as an open gap rather than guessed from another system’s rule. Consult your own plan’s refund/forfeiture terms before deciding. Any additional field marked “not stated” in the verdicts table above was genuinely absent from the official materials read, not omitted for space.
Sources
Read September 3, 2026.
Related public pension systems: Maryland MSRPS · Colorado PERA.
General information drawn from each system’s own official published materials, not legal, tax or financial advice. Vesting, COLA and buyback rules are set by state statute and plan tier, differ materially by hire date, and can change by future legislation. This page cannot see your own member statement, which governs. We are not a law firm, a tax adviser, or a fiduciary, and this is not personalized advice.